Regarding Ishmael

Ponderings on the "Ishmael" series by Daniel Quinn. If you haven't read at least "Ishmael", the first in the series, go do so first. This blog really won't make sense to you until you've read the books.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Yesterday I went into my backyard and picked blackberries, and there was a wasp who was eating (or is it drinking?) too ... I took the ripe ones, while it seemed to like the really overripe ones better.

I'm not intrinsically afraid of insects like a lot of women seem to be, so I don't instinctively bat at one flying by unless it gets in my face. This wasp wasn't even making noise. So I let it do its thing.

While I was picking the last good berries, it occurred to me that we were doing much as DQ mentioned animals do all the time. Animals coexist unless one has something the other needs (like their body for food). He even calls it the law of nature. It's why I could go out picking blackberries with a wasp flying around and not get stung.

The author describes making friends with a man who likes to hunt and fish, and one day they went out fishing together. Then he said something which startled her:

... you can’t go out hunting with thoughts in your head that you’re gonna
kill, kill, kill. The animals know. You just have to be chill and kinda
melt into the woods. If a bird lands on you without realizing you’re
there, when squirrels run up the tree without noticing you — that’s
when you know you’re doing it right.

This man has stumbled upon the law of nature.

It's funny the way he describes it, because while I was picking blackberries, before the wasp showed up, that's how my mind was -- still, quiet, just focusing on the berries and the colander I held them in. I wasn't seeing myself as separate or in danger or worrying about things or anything like that.

I suppose the wasp felt the quiet in me, because I picked blackberries right alongside it, within inches of it, and it didn't even shy away. It was amazing to watch.

It felt surreal, magical, yet it was completely real.

--

This same article goes on to talk about the abstract:

We know that civilization doesn’t work because it is too far abstracted
from nature. But I think we look at our impending reacquaintance with
nature as a further abstraction from civilization. It’s something to
ponder academically and make up terms like “geologian” and “Gaia
hypothesis” so we can seem impressive to each other. The efforts of
permaculturists, Transition Towns, low-tech aficionados and the like are
simply carrying forward the mythology of progress ...

Separating ourselves psychologically and emotionally from the reality of nature is what got us where we are today. Separating ourselves psychologically and emotionally from this reality of civilization won't bring us back to the garden -- it will only create a new "low tech" group of Takers who have the One True Way (and to hell with everyone else).

You can see it already in the hierarchy, the dogma, the structure, the "my way or the highway" mentality in many of these groups -- all based off fear instead of the quiet heart of nature.

Many of these people don't seem to be able to let others just be, which is why I haven't gotten much involved with any of it -- I just lurk around the edges and learn what I can.

So what's the answer?

If there is a “correct” way to critique civilization, it is not with
concepts. It is by throwing oneself down in the dirt and sobbing one’s
eyes out. It is in feeling the terror and pain from which civilization supposedly protects us. It is gazing into the abyss
and allowing it to gaze into us, knowing that the abyss is a spiritual
artifact of civilization. Like so much else that seems the natural order
of things, this particular abyss isn’t real, does not exist.

I really believe that the key to extricating is learning to feel. It
is less about doing this or that with one’s money, living in this or
that certain way. The squirrels and the birds and the bucks and the fish
all carry on their lives by feeling — they do not suffer the burden of
abstractions, they live whatever they happen to feel, right now. And the
trick to getting by in civilization is to not feel what one feels at any given moment. In fact, this is the very nature of control itself.

Learning to feel might be the most difficult part of the extrication
process. Intellectual honesty will only get you so far… there comes a
point when all the head-smacking holy-shit moments lead up to a complex,
unpleasant emotional reaction. Processing and making peace with these
feelings, and sharing our own experiences so that others who come behind
us might have a trail to follow, is, I would argue, more important than
stockpiling rainwater or raising backyard chickens. Western
civilization has at its very root a deep psychic wounding, and if we are
ever to move on, we have to do the psychic healing work sooner rather
than later. As far as I can tell, this is the only path from abstraction
— that is, the not-real — back into reality — that is, the real. (bold emphasis mine)

As Morpheus said, welcome to the world of the real.

Wow, The Matrix. If you've never seen that movie you should. Talking about the insights in that movie is a whole other post, but it goes deeply into the nature of what's real and what isn't and what if you couldn't tell the difference?

I think this woman gets it. Dealing with deep psychic wounding is something I've been doing for years now (coming from a completely different angle), and yet I feel as if I've just touched the surface. Most people haven't even begun.

What she's talking about is letting yourself be -- letting yourself be who you are, feel what you really feel, find and explore the inner places you were tortured or shamed into bricking over.

It occurs to me that one reason (possibly the only reason) people can't let others be who they are is that doing that would shine a spotlight on the fact that they aren't being who they are, that they're wasting their lives and everything they could be for nothing but a hope of fitting in, and that's too terrifying for them to handle.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

I was thinking today about something Jared said that has always bothered me, something to the effect that you have to be told things over and over in order to remember them. I don't think that's true.

You don't have to be told repeatedly that the sun's going to come up, or about the law of gravity, or that your mom likes yellow roses. You don't have to be told the traffic laws over and over, or the rules of basketball, or how to tie your shoes. That's because all of these things are either directly observable, or are necessary for your life.

Most religion, when it comes down to it, is neither.

The only reason people are so fixated on the state and religion and all the other trappings of civilization is that these value and tenets ARE repeated over and over, an intentional brainwashing that happens from the earliest days of childhood.

It's necessary, you see, in order to keep children AS frightened children, to never let them grow up to observe life on their own and make their own determinations about what's right and wrong, what's good or bad, what they think for themselves.

Parents begin it with punitive, rigid, violent upbringing (just like they got from their parents), then the schools systematically praise the compliant, the obedient, the orderly, the compulsive, and the creative and sensitive ones who think for themselves rock the boat and are shunned and crushed.

And the others see this, which reinforces the idea that obedience and conformity is safe. To a traumatized child, nothing is as important as being safe.

So they go on to be obedient, compliant, good citizens, and the sociopaths use them as stair steps on the climb to leadership.

It all comes down to power, because if most of the world is filled with frightened, traumatized children, unable to make decisions or think for themselves, then the not-so-benevolent parent can do or say whatever he likes. Perhaps a few of the more rebellious children will say or do something to resist, but the ones who the other children don't ostracize and torment into submission are easy to isolate and punish.

There are a few who make it through, though: the sociopaths, who can't feel anything except an angry lust for power, and those very special and lucky ones who either kept their sense of self-worth or were determined enough to claw their way back from the depths to regain it.

The first group is past saving, in my view. Tribal societies shunned, executed, or sent most of this group to die in war, because they knew that to keep them around was a direct danger to the tribe. Unfortunately, many of these people are now our leaders, those "parents" who are making decisions for "the greater good".

Um, yeah.

The second group is where most of our innovators have come from.

Think of what we could have done, where we could be now if that group were even 1% larger.

Monday, December 5, 2011

I've added some blogs to the sidebar here that you might like. I only mention this because those of you who just read feeds (like I do) would miss that if I didn't. ;)

Life goes on as it has for the past ten millennia, empires rising and falling, with the "common man" and the "elites" playing their parts in the charade. I wonder when Toto will finally pull the curtain back to reveal the sad old man who's controlling the show in this iteration, and who it will be.

I feel a great deal of affection for those of you who visit here. It's always good to know that there are others out there who want to become B and have a vision of what life could be.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

So all my friends list is in a uproar about the 99% and the 53% and the 47% and whatever % people want to argue about.

But when I try to get them to explain what the hub-bub is about, they talk about corporations and the Fed and all that.

Apparently the Occupy movement is a bunch of people who are waking up to the fact that something is wrong, sort of like their spiritual progenitors the Hippies did.

The more astute among them think there's a cage somewhere, and that they're in it. The rest are sure all their discomfort is the fault of the corporations for messing things up for everyone else and taking all the goodies for themselves (they can't grasp the idea of a cage yet).

From what I can see, the discussions are about how to make the cage tidier and nicer and so everyone has health care and jobs while in the cage. Or we could build a new cage, one that WE run instead of the corporations! Stuff like that.

No one seems to consider that they could just walk out of the cage and do something else.

(Gasp! What would we do without civilization, with hierarchy and rulers and police! Without totalitarian agriculture? How would we eat? Do you want to go back to the Wild Wild West? The Stone Age?? Think of the children!!!)

But I think that will come someday soon, because there are enough neo-Leavers (or proto-Leavers, in my case) around to point out the bars, which wasn't the situation back in the 60's.

Friday, September 30, 2011

I ran across an insightful post just now which did something I hadn't thought of doing: deconstructing exactly who these Leavers are ...

Leavers

live by the Law of Limited Competition; food is freely accessible to all

live in the hands of the gods; this is an easy, carefree, and satisfying way of life

have a highly evolved social system that works well for humans as they actually are and places limits on disruptive behavior

live without devouring the planet; their wealth is giving and getting support

see themselves as belonging to the world

... Leavers are people who are both willing and able to live in co-adaptation with each other and the Earth. (Contrast that with the Takers, who are people who insist on controlling and dominating each other and the Earth.)

... Invariably, Leavers have been sharers. Their economic lives are guided by the rule of thumb that says, Take the small stuff, share the big stuff. A hunter who caught a rabbit fed his own family. But a gazelle was shared around. And studies of recent Leaver tribes show people acutely aware of the dangers of power who keep a close eye on how it is used. Many readily available cultural means nip power abuse in the bud.

Amazing. I love it.

And look at this!

It seems that at least some of the "primitive tribes" that have been recorded over the last 200 years or so have been refugees from civilization. Folks who said no to the civilized way of life, took to the hills and evolved their own culture away from takerism. (emphasis mine)

Wow. So it is more than possible, it has already been done. All we have to do is have the courage to start.